Updated July 30, 2026
Latency can be a drain on both revenue and user experience, but it’s an essential part of implementing various direct and programmatic advertising strategies. The industry is always trying to reduce latency’s impact, and publishers have a lot to gain from participating in that effort. Let’s unpack why high latency occurs, and what publishers can do to keep it under control.
One of the most common causes of latency is the purchasing processes between publishers and their buyers. Regardless of how a publisher’s inventory is sold, latency issues can creep into everyday operations.
Latency can occur in direct campaigns for several reasons. First, there might be setup issues where the agency or advertiser might not have added a creative to a tag. This can cause the publisher’s server to create latency as it looks for something that is not in the system. There may also be consistency issues, such as unmatched data across servers or creatives that are the wrong size for placements. Any one of these problems can slow down the entire system by consuming too much valuable bandwidth.
Similar to direct deals, ads sold programmatically can cause issues when there are too many additional redirects or “hops” included before the server can render an ad. This may be due to an innocent mistake made by the buy-side (such as duplicate viewability tags), but it may also be caused by something more malicious, including fraud. In either case, it is important to identify the source quickly before larger problems can develop.
For direct-sold, establish a thorough campaign setup process to double-check tags before launch. This might be easier said than done, depending on the number of campaigns that are running, but solutions like DV Publisher Suite can handle much of the legwork automatically.
For programmatic, employ header-bidding wrappers to streamline bidding processes and reduce serving time. Also, maintain a proactive fraud-avoidance strategy and work closely with buyers to identify and stop bad actors.
Video advertising is appealing to publishers due to its demand among buyers and generally higher CPMs. But managing latency in video comes with some unique challenges of its own. For instance, the creative files involved are almost always larger and more complex than standard display ads, which is a natural cause for slowdown. There are also different advertiser tags for wrapping video ads, and potential server issues that limit publisher options.
The two tags of note in video advertising are the Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) and the Video Player-Ad-Serving Interface Definition (VPAID). VAST covers linear video ads and provides simple tracking, while VPAID enables highly interactive ads with much greater complexity. If they are not kept up to date with the most recent standards, they can cause problems for the publisher’s ad server, such as excessive redirects and failed creative delivery.
Video ads may be served via a publisher or advertiser ad server. If the former, publishers have more control over how the ad is shown and have an easier time managing latency, assuming the publisher’s ad server is pulling the right-sized version according to user screen size and connection speed. If the latter, creative management is easier for the advertiser, but gives the publisher less control over latency issues if the wrong rendition of the video ad is sent to the server.
Managing these types of latency can be difficult, because it usually boils down to the quality of demand the partners bring to publishers. When evaluating video demand partners, watch for secondary and tertiary auctions as well as the time it takes to return a bid. These all contribute to latency, but because of the large average file size, the effects are much more noticeable on load times.
Publishers can also unintentionally contribute to their own latency woes with suboptimal page layouts. This is often overlooked when trying to improve speed, but it plays a significant part in user experience. It may seem self-evident, but pages with more ad content will require more time and bandwidth to load, which, in turn, causes unnecessary slowdowns.
Managing content on the page is well within publisher control and much easier to optimize without external partners. Consider these in-house solutions:
Latency comes in many different forms, and no single solution can address them all. But with a proactive approach and consistent testing, publishers can minimize latency’s impact and keep both their partners and audiences happy.
Reach out today to learn more about latency solutions, or to schedule a demo with the DV team!